By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS
Davos (Switzerland) : The global challenge posed by the emergence of companies from India and other rapidly developing economies has taken the world by surprise, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said Thursday.
Speaking at a breakfast session organised by industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Boston Consulting Group in Davos, he said many of these companies had been taking advantage of India’s burgeoning technology sector and large population of young people.
“The new drivers of the future have shown the power of this combination in India,” he said.
The minister, who is part of a large Indian delegation to the World Economic Forum (WEF), said Indian companies were being driven by intellectual and entrepreneurial ability, rather than by arbitrage costs alone.
“For about a decade, such companies in India, China, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand have been getting their act together and several of them have now become global. Even in India, many are newcomers,” he said.
Kamal Nath said the existence of a large domestic market had helped Indian companies become competitive and catapult themselves globally.
The Indian minister singled out the East Asia region for praise, saying a spate of regional trade agreements between India and East Asian countries underscored that the fact India and the rest of Asia were reaching out to each other.
Hans-Paul Buerkner, president and CEO of Boston Consulting Group, which has drawn up a list of “100 New Global Challengers” comprising companies from rapidly developing economies, said these 100 companies are growing three times as fast as Fortune 500 companies.
Rahul Bajaj, chairman of automaker Bajaj Auto Ltd which made it to the list, said the opening up of the Indian economy in 1991 taught Indian companies how to be competitive.
He said low cost was not always an advantage as India had high transaction costs.